Howdy Embarkers! Your resident Senior Research Scientist, Aaron, reporting. Recently someone asked us a very reasonable question about dog DNA on our Facebook page. In short, one of our customers wanted to know how we can differentiate ancestry from closely related breeds. For example, American Bulldogs and modern English Bulldogs...
Hi Embarkers! Aaron Sams, Research Scientist at Embark, here. If you are an Embarker that has opted to participate in scientific research, you’re officially a citizen scientist! On behalf of Embark, I want to say thanks for your contribution. This week, Embark is presenting some of the first research to...
What makes a dog breed a dog breed? Let’s answer that question using one of the most popular breeds today as an example: the Corgi. For starters, the signature bobtail in the Pembroke Welsh Corgis comes from a mutation in the T-box gene. Without it, the Corgi everyone knows and...
There are some traits, like short bobtails, where variation in one gene is enough to predict outcomes. Dogs (like most animals) have two copies of a given gene. So you only need to track three combinations or genotypes (e.g., AA, Aa, and aa) for these traits. There are other traits,...
